I don’t know about you guys, but usually during this time of year I find myself eating a lot of appetizer type foods rather than actual meals. Probably because I, along with my family, spend a lot of time camped out in front of the television watching basketball.

MY LATEST RECIPES

I love basketball season. I have admitted time and again on here that sports are big in my house with my boys, but I rarely get to watch. Too many kids. Too many responsibilities. Too little time to devote to long game watching. But I do love basketball. It is definitely my favorite sport to watch on television. And it is fun to get in the spirit and root for my favorite teams, fill out a bracket, and celebrate with game-watching parties and food!

These are one of my favorites to serve because they have more heft than a lot of appetizers. You could even eat them for dinner, as they are a piece of chicken breast, cut into chunks, rolled in Cheez-It Grooves (which are made with real cheese), and baked to perfection.

When I went to Walmart to pick up the Cheez-It crackers for this recipe I was surprised by the huge variety offered. I had no idea there were so many flavors and varieties of Cheez-It! And I can’t decide which are my favorite. But I think I will have to keep testing them out so I can enter the Most Valuable Cheese Contest! Check it out: It runs from Feb-April 2015. Users can vote on their favorite flavors/varieties from six popular Cheez-It flavors and play games for a chance to win $10,000. I know I could use $10,000, how about you?

Anyway, I bought my crackers, crushed them, coated my chicken, and baked it. I love using Cheez-Its because they are dedicated to using only 100% real cheese, which means you get tons of great flavor in every cracker!

Once they finished baking, I got them ready to be our game time appetizer by giving them a fun little something extra—I use a toothpick, and threaded a Cheez-It Crunch’D through it, and then put it in the chicken pieces. And I served them with a roasted poblano cheese sauce! They had crunch, real cheese flavor, and a creamy cheese sauce making for one extra delicious and totally cheesy snack!

Notes

Our recipe card software calculates these nutrition facts based on averages for the above ingredients, different brands, and quality of produce/meats may have different nutritional information, always calculate your own based on the specific products you use in order to achieve accurate macros for this recipe.

When I was finished making the chicken, I thought it would be fun to recycle the box the crackers came in to make something really fun for game day. So I laid it out flat, cut it into a pendant shape, and let my kids decorate it with their favorite team colors, and player numbers!

It was so easy, here’s how you can do it:

How to:

Lay box out flat

Using a straight edge, draw your pendant triangle shape on the box, be sure to leave the one edge flap available to fold over.

Cut out the triangle.

Tape a pencil, dowel, or stick inside the crease, and then fold crease over.